So i finally got some time to work on what i hope will be the first matching I-5 mower deck. I was given a pretty beaten up deck by Nomad. It had one mower motor on it that was ceased up. Miraculously Jeff A was able to rebuild the motor for me. So that got me thinking i should try to rebuild the deck completely.

Unfortunately i deleted my before pics - But trust me it was bad. So here she is after a half hour straight of sandblasting and 3 bags of coal slag. Yeah i have a really really big air compressor.

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Unfortunately this deck really needed another bag to really get everything clean, but i ran out so i moved to manual grinding and acid wash for the remainder. In any case this deck was pretty well bent from a previous owner. The first thing i did was put it on my cement garage floor and stand on it. This allowed me to get it sort of level. I then tacked on a piece of steel to what was the side discharge.

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This allowed it to hold a reasonable shape. I then worked on filling/shaping the rest of the area.

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With that closed up the deck sits pretty level...

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However even though it sits naturally level, if i add the rear wheels to the mix the whole thing goes crooked again. I am however able to get all three motor holes to read 4 1/2 inches to the ground if i level the front casters and leave the rears disconnected. So it is pretty well bent. I am thinking now that i will use the stock front casters (motor holes level) and make a set of adjustable rear wheels. The most important thing to me is having the motor holes equidistant to the ground?

I recently rebuilt a Wheel Horse deck that was fairly bent as well. I was able to straighten it mostly by leaving the caster mounts attached, running a long bar through the caster hole with the bushings removed, and just pry until the front is square. If yours seems to be square and flat in the front, you may be able to use a 2x4 across the tapered back and wrench it the same way with a large pipe wrench in various places. Sounds like yours may be "extra" bent in the back for the rear roller to make a difference. Make sure you have the casters spaced equal to the rear roller setting, or it wont sit flat anyway. I have been able to straighten even the craziest of decks, where most of the bends are from the front rollers getting caught in a hole or being smashed against a tree.

It's not the *first* matching I-5 deck - mine's all orange with the fat motors.

Why don't you planish out that big deformation by the chute with a mallet and a bag of sand? If your hammer skills are rusty, use a deadblow hammer on a clean anvil (or reasonable facsimile). The metal's pretty thin, should only take about 15 minutes of work.

How big? I have a line on a two-stage Devilbiss but I need to first clean out my garage and then make arrangements with several different people AND rent a truck to get it. It will be worth it as the price can't be beat. I think it has a 3 horsepower motor on it right now but I also think it is a replacement motor and far undersized for the compressor proper.

Many years ago I was drawing up a purchase order for an air-powered vacuum to be used when cleaning boilers. The salesman tried to talk me out of it because it used a lot of air. I told him I had 21,000 CFM capacity in my compressor plant with the smallest machine putting out at least 300 CFM. I DO know about big compressors.

Quincy 325. Was set up for continuous run as it came out of a laundry. Used to run the press machines. I turned it down from 180psi to 165. When sandblasting it has no problem at all keeping up with my pressure blaster. Don't use it much nowadays.

Nice machine! Quincy makes some of the best smaller compressors I have ever seen.

I used to have a compressor unit I made from the air brake compressor off of a Greyhound bus. That think was rated at 12 CFM but I don't know at what speed. My daddy got the pump in a trade when I was just a kid and it sat in the garage for many years until I got an itch. I built an oil pump for it, got a three horsepower (3 phase) motor for free, converted the motor to single phase operation and welded up a stand. We used that compressor for years and never ran out of air, sandblasting, impact wrenches and hammers, parts cleaning and spray painting with a monster Devilbiss spray gun. I lost it after my mother died. My brother and his kid were supposed to move it but the afternoon before closing it was still in the garage. I didn't have a truck and didn't have a place to store it either. Maybe my brother and nephew got it out, maybe not.